Bookstack: Changing from WYSIWYG to Markdown Messes With Existing Pages When Going to Edit

Created on 24 Apr 2017 · 10Comments · Source: BookStackApp/BookStack

BookStack Version: v0.16.0
PHP Version: v7.0.15-0ubuntu0.16.04.4
MySQL Version: mysql-5.7

Expected Behavior

After changing from WYSIWYG to Markdown, I expect pages to be converted, or at least roughly approximated. When I go to edit, the editor panel should show converted Markdown

Actual Behavior

When I go to edit a page after making the switch from WYSIWYG to Markdown, I see HTML in the editor and preview windows. Saving the page loses all formatting that was present when WYSIWYG was enabled.

Example (page was originally written with the WYSIWYG editor):

Source

Ethanb00

👍13

Most helpful comment

without looking at the code, I think the WYSIWYG editor should result in saved markdown not html. That way both input editors can be used at the same time.

simonsmiley on 3 Jul 2017

👍5

All 10 comments

without looking at the code, I think the WYSIWYG editor should result in saved markdown not html. That way both input editors can be used at the same time.

simonsmiley on 3 Jul 2017

👍5

not sure what you mean. My pages were originally created using WYSIWYG. Switch to markdown, breaks everything to HTML.

Ethanb00 on 3 Jul 2017

yeah. What I'm suggesting is that the WYSIWYG editor save everything as markdown. So you don't have the issue of incompatibility between the WYSIWYG and markdown editor. Then both could be supported at the same time. I would like to use markdown to edit the pages, cause it's faster than choosing something using the mouse. While others that are not familiar with markdown would prefer a more "office"-like experience

simonsmiley on 3 Jul 2017

👍3

I agree that storing everything as markdown will be ideal for cross-compatibility. The issue is that markdown, By design, is limited in what can be done compared to HTML.
I suppose you could always fallback to HTML within markdown for those cases. Still, We'd need a good WYSIWYG editor that works to markdown or a way to accurately convert the HTML output from TinyMCE to markdown.

ssddanbrown on 5 Jul 2017

👍1

@simonsmiley apologies. I misunderstood you. Yes, that makes sense to me.

@ssddanbrown would something like StackEdit (https://stackedit.io/) work?

Ethanb00 on 7 Jul 2017

@Ethanb00 As nice as stackedit is, I don't think it will help in this situation. Stackedit is still editing markdown with an edit side and a preview side.

One of my main goals for BookStack was for it to provide a simple, Directly editable experience straight out of the box. Something that anyone that has used a word processor could pick up. Something like stackedit strays a little too far from that concept really.

ssddanbrown on 10 Jul 2017

No worries. Thanks for the explaination.

Ethanb00 on 11 Jul 2017

Just seen that part of the original issue here (Preview rendering) was fixed as per issue #378 (Was an oversight when we changed the markdown library a few releases ago). Will leave this open though for conversations about HTML <-> markdown conversion.

ssddanbrown on 11 Jul 2017

I would be nice to have this reverse compatibility when changing from WYSIWYG to markdown.

In my opinion, everything should be saved in markdown and the things that can only be done in HTML I would save it in HTML inside markdown (markdown supports html).

galaxyfeeder on 8 Nov 2017

👍4

Being able to switch between markdown and WYSIWYG editor would be awesome and make bookstack almost perfect for our use. Could something like https://github.com/leeoniya/reMarked.js be useful?